Ralph Smith on echo and allusion in the Bible stemming from the Trinity:
“In other words, the complexity of meaning in the biblical text is a special case within literature, because only the Bible is equally the word of God and the word of man. Behind the surplus of meaning in the God-inspired text is the reality of the triune God Himself. The Son is the exact image of the Father, a perfect and exact reproduction of all that the Father is as the Father. And yet, He is an exact image as Son, not as a clone of the Father or an attempted replacement for the Father. The Spirit, too, is ontologically one with Father and Son because the three are one God, sharing the same essence and attributes. Nevertheless, the Spirit is perfectly distinct as Spirit. In His person, there is something special that conditions all He is and does. The sameness within difference and difference within sameness that characterizes the persons of the Trinity is the rich ontological background for God’s communication to man and man’s communication to God and other men. The interpersonal communion in God is a fellowship of love in the which each person wholly gives Himself to the others–a communion of self-giving love that grounds all communication within the triune God.
In the word that the triune God speaks to us, therefore, there must be an infinite surplus of meaning, for it is the Word of the Creator, who inspires the words of the prophets and controls all history, guiding the minds and hearts of every man to the end of the world.” The Baptism of Jesus Christ, pp. 70-71.
